America and the world of Islam

In July and August, I was in the United States on a long visit including a lecture tour of one of their universities. I had all the time in the world to follow the discussion in the media about American foreign policy. The foreign policy of any country is essentially designed to protect that country’s national interest and the office charged with articulating and prosecuting that interest is the Office of the President or Prime Minister depending on which system of government that is being followed. In the case of the United States, it is the office of the President that is responsible for executing America’s foreign policy. The Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, the Central Intelligence Agency and all other security forces contribute to advising the President in the formulation and execution of the foreign policy. When President Obama was running for office, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were raging. He ran on a peace platform to end these two wars to bring American soldiers home, he was able to extricate the United States from the quagmire in Iraq and was determined to wind down American military involvement in Afghanistan and in spite of provocation by Iran and the urging of Israel, the tail that waxed the dog of American foreign policy, to take on Iran militarily on the grounds that that country is building atomic bomb, Obama had resisted and he is working with the P-5 and Germany to prevail on Iran not to go the way of building atomic weapons. The resolution of this problem is still ongoing and the recent meeting between the two parties has not resulted into expected solutions. Iran says, it has its sovereign rights to go into peaceful use of atomic power without any restriction and that it has no plans to build atomic weapons which it claims would even be against the dictates of the Quran but nobody believes them. The situation in the Middle-east in general characterised by violence, wars, and Islamic fanaticism frightens the western world about an Islamic bomb. Of course, Pakistan an Islamic country already has the bomb which makes some people to feel uncomfortable because Pakistan is totally unstable and its government could well fall into the hands of Muslim fanatics. It is with this background that the west particularly the United States and the Europeans and apparently excluding Russia are scared to death when there is instability in the Middle-east.

The declaration of the so-called Islamic Caliphate (IS or ISIL) in Iraq and the Levant has further introduced a complex factor into the Middle-east cauldron. The beheading of American and British nationals by this so-called Caliphate has put so much pressure on the Americans and their allies to do something. Obama for weeks resisted the urging of the media and the right-wing politicians in the Republican Party that feel that Obama’s foreign policy was amounting to appeasement and was leading to lack of respect for American power globally. They want America to resist Russian aggression in the Ukraine, intervene militarily in Syria, send troops back to Iraq to degrade and destroy the Caliphate and possibly invade Iran to remove the possibility of that country building nuclear weapons. In their madness, they would also want America and their allies to intervene and probably engage in nation-building in Libya that has collapsed after the NATO murder of Muhammad Ghadafi. I watched with dismay, the ignorance of many so-called experts in the US put pressure on their government to embark on military adventure overseas without counting the cost. I of course remember President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning Americans to be careful of not handing over its government to what he called the military industrial complex. This is to say corporations that are building weapons of war as the basis of their industrial prosperity. Without these weapons being used their prosperity would not be sustainable. Ironically, it is when Americans are at war that there is more employment if not full employment. The point to make is that there is economic interest in going to war among some circles in United States. The public face of this war mongering group is the Fox network and the rest of the Murdock media empire. Their constant barrage of information and abuse of Obama as a weakling has finally forced the poor man to start bombing ISIL in Syria and Iraq and occasionally bombing Al-Shabab in Somalia and sending drones into Pakistan’s Waziristan. One would not be surprised even without discussion with Nigeria, the war party in the US may prevail on Obama to start bombing north-eastern Nigeria all in the cause of putting down global terrorism. The recent mid-term elections in the United States in which the Republican Party took over the two arms of Congress amounted to repudiation among other things, of Obama’s foreign policy of employing diplomacy to solve inter-state problems rather than using the awesome military might of the United States. We now have a situation in which 3000 foot soldiers are now deployed back to Iraq while Obama continues with the charade that he would not deploy back American foot soldiers in Iraq. The logic of this situation is that mission creep would set in and 3000 troops would grow into hundreds of thousands before the forces of ISIL can be degraded and destroyed. The air force alone which has been dubbed the Shiite air force would not do the job and there would be need for American infantry and armoured forces to clear the forces of ISIL on the ground. This unfortunately would totally destroy the pacific legacy of Obama’s presidency and his campaign of bringing American soldiers home, a campaign platform on which he was elected. There is also no certainty that when American forces are drastically reduced in Afghanistan, the situation there will be stable. The worst scenario therefore is that Obama will end his presidency and be disgraced out of power with America fighting wars in Syria, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. This will gladden the hearts of the racists who ab initio expected the first black American president to fail. This unfortunate legacy will seal the fate of future non-white aspirants to the White House.